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Libraries: challenge setup details and best practices

This article pertains to library clients. If you’re a school client, check out this article. To learn more about challenges, including setup and badges, visit Beanstack for Everyone.

This article walks you through the challenge setup customization options available to a library administrator within a draft reading challenge.

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Once you’ve activated a challenge template or created a challenge from scratch, you can customize the Challenge Setup section to set the basic details for your challenge by following the steps below.

Basic Info
Challenge Availability
Required Registration Information

Basic Info

  1. Challenge Name: What do you want to call this challenge? The name will be visible to readers and should be unique and easy to understand for readers and staff alike. Consider including the year, age range, and/or log type in the challenge name if it helps you differentiate between challenges! 
  2. Challenge Description: Tell your readers all about your challenge! We recommend including at least 150 characters describing how the challenge works and any prizes or incentives. You can use html in your description to add things like spacing, boldface, links, and more.
  3. Challenge Preview Card Description: This optional field is a shortened challenge description that will display on the landing page if the challenge is featured and when readers are logged in and exploring new challenges they have yet to enroll in. If you leave this field blank, your Challenge Description will display instead.
  4. Challenge Position: If you are offering more than one challenge, determine where this challenge will appear on a reader’s page. 
  5. Header Image: Include a challenge image. The ideal size for this image is 920px x 351px, with an overall file size less than 10MB in either jpeg, jpg, gif, or png form.

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Challenge Availability

  1. Age or Grade: What ages or grade level is this challenge available? Remember, if you are scoping a challenge according to grade level, you want that registration field to be required on your site. We recommend scoping all your challenges by either age or grade, but not a mix of the two.
  2. Challenge Dates: When will the challenge be live and available to readers? Set those in date fields, or leave blank to create an ongoing challenge that’s always available to eligible readers. Reading list and bingo challenges cannot be ongoing, so you must input a start and end date in order to save and eventually publish it.
  3. Is this challenge only for staff members? Is this challenge intended to be only for those with staff level access? If so, select “Yes." This is a setting you may change later, but can be helpful for testing purposes!
  4. Require a code to register for this challenge? Toggle this setting on and set a unique challenge code if you want to restrict access to this challenge to specific readers to whom you give the code. Code-protected challenges are not displayed to eligible readers unless the correct code is entered, and cannot be used with alternative challenges.
  5. Allow readers to preregister for this challenge? By toggling this on, readers can register for the challenge as soon as it is published, but cannot participate until the start date.
  6. Feature this challenge on your landing page? By toggling this on and enabling featured challenges in your landing page settings, you are adding this challenge’s preview card to your landing page.
  7. Alternative Challenges: If you want readers to participate in this challenge and any other challenge, select Disable Alternative Challenges. If you want them to choose between this and another challenge, select Enable Alternative Challenges. Keep in mind that you cannot use a challenge code on alternative challenges, so this setting will not appear if that one is enabled.

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Required Registration Information

Enable the reader registration information you want to require your readers to provide before enrolling in the challenge, like gender, grade level, or branch.

Note: If readers already provide this information when they register for Beanstack, it is unnecessary to require them to provide it again.

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